A middle school class project is sending sixth-graders out of the classroom and into the community.

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Their job will be to work with local organizations to fix problems they themselves identify within their neighborhoods and communities.

The project is called the Make a Change Project, and it's motivating students at Monte Vista Christian.

The assignment is labeled as a Social Studies and Language Arts hybrid, but it will go way beyond a lesson plan.

Sixth-graders were given a question to start: “How can I make a positive change in our community?”

The students must come up with a way to serve and an organization to partner with to achieve their goals.

“To see sixth graders making those types of phone calls, speaking as if they were an adult, was really impressive. One student got off the phone and just high-fived (me) and could not believe he just accomplished what he had,” teacher Carissa Medina said.

The teams presented their accomplishments to an audience of parents and peers Wednesday.

Twenty-six projects addressed topics ranging from fighting hunger to animal cruelty. Bella Primavera, 12, and her team joined forces to solve the problem of pollution.

“We partnered up with Save Our Shores and we did a three-hour beach cleanup at Cowell's Beach,” Primavera said.

Hunter Huston and his team didn't like the effect graffiti was having in their neighborhoods.

“We saw graffiti around the neighborhood once we got the idea to clean up graffiti and we just saw it around, influencing kids to start tagging, and it wasn't a good influence. So we thought we should do something about it,” Huston said.

Not only did they improve their hometowns, but they did it in what's become Monte Vista fashion: recording and editing their experiences using the iMovie App on their iPads and using Google Docs to keep and share information in the project based learning method.

“When I was on the beach I saw so much trash and after I picked it up I felt so good about it and the beach looked so much cleaner,” Primavera said.